Nea has therapy 4 hours a week. That doesn't seem like much, but trust me when I tell you...that's a lot for a 2 year old. We also have things we do at home....which means Nea is spending about 8 hours a week doing some sort of therapy or therapy play. And just for added fun, we are sprinkling sensory integration in the mix of it all!
Let me bring you up to speed on this sensory perception issue that many (if not most) Autistic kids have. Stanley Greenspan, author of the book The Challenging Child, describes sensory perception disorders in this way.....
"Imagine driving a car that isn't working well. When you step on the gas the car sometimes lurches forward and sometimes doesn't respond. When you blow the horn it sounds blaring. The brakes sometimes slow the car, but not always. The blinkers work occasionally, the steering is erratic, and the speedometer is inaccurate. You are engaged in a constant struggle to keep the car on the road, and it is difficult to concentrate on anything else."
Now imagine trying to drive this car and someone is wanting you to practice speech! Yah, okay that would be maddening. We need to get this sensory thing under control so Nea can spend time with better concentration and better able to learn!
One of the first things that A did was try to get her on a beanbag chair. Pffft....Nea flipped out. Total meltdown city. We went from "happy" to "DefCon 6" in like 20 sec. I was shocked. A beanbag chair? Seriously? I went and bought one that very day! We are working on this thing for sure!
And, she loves it now! So what does it do? The beanbag chair envelops her.....it provides sensory input to her, it calms her and relaxes her. All those little beans provide thousands of little pressure points and allow her brain a few moments to think clearly (because it's not trying to stay on the road constantly). Now she uses the beanbag chair as a crash pad. When she's upset, when she's frustrated, when she can't find words....she will run, full throttle and fling herself face first into that bean bag chair.
It's funny, we must have picked up on subtle signs earlier...... Does anyone remember when I said this on facebook last year?
"We got Nea a dogbed, she kept trying to get in the one for the dogs, and we found she just sleeps better" That dogbed had a sheepskin top.... She always slept very well on it! We were doing sensory integration and we didn't even know it!
Today in OT, it was all about balls. "A" had probably 20 different balls and they each had a different texture. Some were pokey, fuzzy, soft, tickley, squishy, etc. "A" took a big yellow ball and squished it against Nea while Nea played on the floor. At first Nea was very confused, and a bit startled. But then I watched her melt into the floor as "A"" essentially gave her a massage running that big yellow ball up and down her body. When A would stop, Nea would turn her head and pat towards her back....essentially asking for more. "A" was super pleased. Me, I just sat in the cornered baffled by it all! The two of them had some sort of give and take thing going on that I was confuttled to understand!
OT people have the strangest toys. They have the most intriguing and yet scary stuff. "A's" room is full of swings, and textures and boxes and jump toys and everything in between. So far after every session "A" pulls Nea and "D" (her speech therapist she loves) around on a scooter, with the beanbag chair on top of them. Nea stresses at first....but eventually she gets into the rhythm of it all. So she gets some sensory integration while working on her core (staying balanced on the scooter) in the safety of D's lap.
Needless to say we have all kinds of new balls at our house now! The koosh ball was a BIG hit! She buried her face in it several times, shaking and shivering as she was doing it. The big orange ball (A's was yellow) was also a great thing. She actually got on her tummy and rolled herself back and forth across the ball. Hell, the girl knows what she's doing long before I can even figure it out!!
This weeks quirk: Nea's perception of pain is not that great. So I found her using my hairclips pinched on her skin. OUUCH! She was trying to get some sort of sensory input, but that is not going to work. We'll have to find something else!
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